Luke 4:3-4

2 d. Luke 4:3-4.

First Temptation.

The text of Luke is very sober: The devil said to Him. The encounter exhibited under this form may be explained as a contact of mind with mind; but in Matthew, the expression came to Him seems to imply a bodily appearance. This, however, is not necessarily its meaning. This term may be regarded as a symbolical expression of the moral sensation experienced by Jesus at the moment when He felt the attack of this spirit so alien from His own. In this sense, the coming took place only in the spiritual sphere. Since Scripture does not mention any visible appearance of Satan, and as the angelophanies are facts the perception of which always implies a co-operation of the inner sense, the latter interpretation is more natural.

The words, if thou art, express something very different from a doubt; this if has almost the force of since: “If thou art really, as it seems...” Satan alludes to God's salutation at the baptism. M. de Pressensé is wrong in paraphrasing the words: “If thou art the Messiah.” Here, and invariably, the name Son of God refers to a personal relation, not to an office (see on Luke 4:22).

But what criminality would there have been in the act suggested to Jesus? It has been said that He was not allowed to use His miraculous power for His own benefit. Why not, if He was allowed to use it for the benefit of others? The moral law does not command that one should love his neighbour better than himself. It has been said that He would have acted from His own will, God not having commanded this miracle. But did God direct every act of Jesus by means of a positive command? Had not divine direction in Jesus a more spiritual character? Satan's address and the answer of Jesus put us on the right track. In saying to Him, If thou art the Son of God, Satan seeks to arouse in His heart the feeling of His divine greatness; and with what object? He wishes by this means to make Him feel more painfully the contrast between His actual destitution, consequent on His human condition, and the abundance to which His divine nature seems to give Him a right. There was indeed, especially after His baptism, an anomaly in the position of Jesus. On the one hand, He had been exalted to a distinct consciousness of His dignity as the Son of God; while, on the other, His condition as Son of man remained the same. He continued this mode of existence wholly similar to ours, and wholly dependent, in which form it was His mission to realize here below the filial life. Thence there necessarily resulted a constant temptation to elevate, by acts of power, His miserable condition to the height of His conscious Sonship. And this is the first point of attack by which Satan seeks to master His will, taking advantage for this purpose of the utter exhaustion in which he sees Him sinking.

Had Jesus yielded to this suggestion, He would have violated the conditions of that earthly existence to which, out of love to us, He had submitted, denied His title as Son of man, in order to realize before the time His condition as Son of God, retracted in some sort the act of His incarnation, and entered upon that false path which was afterwards formulated by docetism in a total or partial denial of Christ come in the flesh. Such a course would have made His humanity a mere appearance.

This is precisely what is expressed in His answer. The word of holy writ, Deuteronomy 8:3, in which He clothes His thought, is admirably adapted, both in form and substance, to this purpose: Man shall not live by bread alone. This term, man, recalls to Satan the form of existence which Jesus has accepted, and from which He cannot depart on His own responsibility.

The omission of the article ὁ before ἄνθρωπος in nine Mjj. gives this word a generic sense which suits the context. But Jesus, while thus asserting His entire acceptance of human nature, reminds Satan that man, though he be but man, is not left without divine succour. The experience of Israel in the wilderness, to which Moses' words refer, proves that the action of divine power is not limited to the ordinary nourishment of bread. God can support human existence by other material means, such as manna and quails; He can even, if He pleases, make a man live by the mere power of His will. This principle is only the application of a living monotheism to the sphere of physical life. By proclaiming it in this particular instance, Jesus declares that, in His career, no physical necessity shall ever compel Him to deny, in the name of His exalted Sonship, the humble mode of existence He adopted in making Himself man, until it shall please God Himself to transform His condition by rendering it suitable to His essence as Son of God. Although Son, He will nevertheless remain subject, subject unto the weakness even of death (Hebrews 5:8).

The words, but by every word of God, are omitted by the Alex.; they are probably taken from Matthew. What reason could there have been for omitting them from the text of Luke? By their suppression, the answer of Jesus assumes that brief and categorical character which agrees with the situation.

The sending of the angels to minister to Jesus, which Matthew and Mark mention at the close of their narrative, proves that the expectation of Jesus was not disappointed; God sustained Him, as He had sustained Elijah in the desert in similar circumstances (1 Kings 19).

The first temptation refers to the person of Jesus; the second, to His work.